Hydroponic cultivation equipment used in a plant factory or the like is conventionally known, wherein plant bodies are held on a holder member such as, for example, a cultivation panel having a plurality of holes, with the roots of the plant bodies extending downward from the holes of the cultivation panel being immersed in cultivation liquid or the like, or sprayed with cultivation liquid or the like.
When cultivating plants that grow in a horizontally widespread manner, for example, by holding them on a holder panel in such hydroponic cultivation equipment, if a single cultivation panel with holes spaced apart in consideration of their grown size is used, the space efficiency will be low, which will reduce the overall production efficiency.
For this reason, plant bodies are transplanted from one to another of cultivation panels with different pitches of holes as the plants grow. For efficient use of space, such transplantation work should desirably be carried out frequently with the plants' growth.
In a plant factory or the like, a reduction in the overall production efficiency due to the plantation work should be avoided. Therefore, a cultivation facility has been proposed where the transplantation work is automated with the use of transplantation devices wherein plant bodies are transplanted from one to another of cultivation panels with different pitches of holes (see, for example, Patent Literature 1).